We had a great time at the scouting camping trip over the weekend even though the weather was cold at night. On Saturday, the kids had a full day of activities. They mixed up with other packs in the DMV area.

One of the highlights was the performance during the campfire program. One of the troops performed a Halloween tune based on “The Addams Family” theme song. The troop leader taught us the lines to sing along. He hummed the riff then sang, “The Thằng Lồn family.”

I flipped the fuck out. Did he just say “Thằng Lồn?” I realized the troop name was “Thăng Long,” but he had to change the diacritics to match the melody and the result was unfortunate. After the program, I confirmed with other leaders and parents to see if it was just me, but I was not alone. One of the leaders pointed out that he heard the same thing because he was right next to the guy who was singing the tune.

The unfortunate misplacement of diacritics had proven that even a Vietnamese speaker can an ancient name of Hà Nội into something completely. In my book, Vietnamese Typography, I emphasized the important of diacritical position to avoid incidents like this one.

A marketing email with the subject line: “Opportunity for vietnamesetypography”

I stopped reading the first part of the email:

Donny,

This is a really interesting site on Japanese typography. It was cool to learn about some of the history from your site.

The person who read my website learned something cool that I did no write. Japanese typography?

Look at mami: eyes blue, 5'2"
I approached her—“Hi, boo, how you?
Pony skin Louie? Oh, you fly too
You a stewardess? Good, ma—I fly too”

Cam’ron (an excerpt from “Down & Out”)

Thư từ bạn TN:

Dạ em chào anh Donny Truong, em muốn mua cuốn sách Vietnamese Typography thì mua qua đâu ạ.

Em thấy có phần đóng góp, thì đấy là đóng góp bao nhiêu cũng được hay nó có một giá nhất định ạ. Em cảm ơn anh.

Chào TN,

Cám ơn bạn đọc Vietnamese Typography. Sách không có bản in vì mình vẫn tiếp tục cặp nhật trong phần giới thiệu phông chữ có dấu Việt (type recommendations) và phần mẫu thiết kế (samples). Mình muốn đây là một dự án tiếp tục hoạt động chứ không dừng lại. Quyển sách khi in rồi thì không còn bổ xung được nữa.

Trong dự án này có phần đóng góp tùy theo bạn đọc không có một giá nhất định. Hy vọng của mình là giúp sức trong công việc làm cho nghệ thuật chữ Việt càng ngày càng phong phú hơn.

Cheers,

Donny

Our three-year-old Vương has two cavity spots on his upper front tooth. His dentist recommended silver diamine fluoride (SDF) treatment to keep his tooth from decaying too quickly. We had an appointment for today. His dentist rubbed the SDF liquid on his tooth. The entire treatment took less than 5 minutes. They charged us $150. My jaw dropped. What a lucrative business.

Erik Villard writes about the South Vietnamese corruption in HistoryNet:

Corruption sapped South Vietnam’s military strength when senior officials pocketed money or resources meant for the armed forces, set up rolls of “ghost soldiers” to collect the pay for nonexistent troops, took bribes in exchange for contracts or put personal connections above proven abilities when they doled out jobs.

He concludes:

Corruption continued to be a major problem even after the communists took power. In 2021, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, which rates countries for corruption on a sale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) placed Vietnam at 39— a slight improvement from its score of 31 a decade earlier. South Vietnam may have had a problem with corruption, but the communist government has proved to be no more honest.

Nilay Patel on the new Verge:

So we sat down and thought about what was really important to us and how to make our homepage valuable every time you open it. We also thought about where we came from and how we built The Verge into what it is today. And we landed on: well shit, we just need to blog more.

So we’re back to basics with something we’re calling the Storystream news feed, right on our homepage. Our plan is to bring the best of old-school blogging to a modern news feed experience and to have our editors and senior reporters constantly updating the site with the best of tech and science news from around the entire internet.

I am glad to see The Verge reinvigorates blogging and I hope to see blogging makes a comeback. I miss reading blogs.

Nhạc dân gian đương đại của Hoàng Thùy Linh không chỉ giai điệu mà luôn cả ca từ cũng hòa lẫn giữa truyền thống và hiện đại. Thí dụ như trong ca khúc “Duyên âm”, nàng đuổi khéo chàng rằng, “Điều anh hằng mong muốn, ba má em sẽ buồn / Anh ơi, anh về đi”. Nếu như nghĩ theo thời xưa thì câu này cũng không có gì ghê gớm lắm. Nhưng nghĩ theo thời nay thì thật là động trời. Điều gì chàng mong muốn mà khiến cho ba má nàng phải buồn? Tôi chỉ nghĩ ra có một điều đó thôi. Đùa chút cho vui thôi. Nếu các bạn hứng thú đọc thêm những phần chơi chữ trong ca từ của những ca khúc của Hoàng Thùy Linh, xem phần đề án nho nhỏ này cho vui.

Robin Rendle’s latest blog post resenates with me. He writes:

Blog your heart! Blog about something you’ve learned, blog about something you’re interested in… Blog about your annoying kids and your fucked up relationship…

For nearly two decades, I have been blogging like no one is reading. I blogged about my life, my issues, and my fucked ups. I got myself in trouble on a couple occasions when I spoke my mind. I don’t know if blogging has helped or hurt my career, but it definitely has changed my life for better or for worse. Regrets I have a few, but then again, too few to mention. I only slipped up a couple of times in the past 20 years. That was not so bad.

My heart broke a little as I had to turn in my iPhone 6 Plus to Verizon. It is still in great condition, but the apps have continued to stop updating. I intended to keep my 6 Plus as long as I could, but a few apps I used for work could no longer update. Since my employer foots the bill, I have to make the upgrade. I was going to go with 14, but Verizon wouldn’t let me trade my 6 for 14 for $300. I chose 13 Pro Max with 256 GB instead. It is definitely a beautiful phone and I hope it will last for at least five years.